In recent years, advertising and other forms of printed literature in sheet form have been distributed to the ultimate user with adhesive applied to the margins thereof in the form of strips of adhesive transfer tapes each comprising a backing strip having a loosely held layer of adhesive material on the side thereof which is face down upon the sheet material and a non-tacky outer face which permits stacking of similar sheets without the sticking together of adjacent sheets in the stack. When the ultimate user desires to apply the sheet material to a vertical wall surface, he peels the backing strip from the sheet material, leaving the adhesive layer upon the sheet material. The sheet material may then be adhesively secured to a vertical wall surface by applying the adhesive-coated side of the sheet material against the wall surface involved.
The machinery heretofore used to apply the adhesive transfer tape at high speeds to the sheet material was single-purpose and very costly and only a relatively few sheet processing plants were available for applying the adhesive transfer tape to sheet material. Other machines were needed to perforate stock, to blade-slit stock, to crease and score stock, and to rotary-slit stock. The sheet material involved was first processed by the printer who provided individual printed sheets in the usual manner. Then, the sheets were usually delivered to the nearest plant having the above mentioned tape-applying machinery, which plant, in many cases, was located hundreds of miles away from the printing plant and from the distributor of the printed material. This procedure was costly in both time and money.
It is apparent that the spacing of the areas of transfer tape applied to the sheets of material fed through the machine varies with the size of the sheet material involved. Another variable with which the machine must deal is the form or pattern of the areas of adhesive transfer tape applied to the sheet material. For example, the tape can be applied in long strips or in spots. In the latter case, the size and spacing of the spots can vary. The tape-applying machines heretofore made are not readily adaptable to these varying conditions. Moreover, difficulty is encountered in operating the machines at high speeds, particularly where the sheet material is thin and fragile, and for any relative movement between the tape and the sheet material in the process of applying such tape will tear the sheet material.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide a machine which can be readily adapted to programmably apply pressure-sensitive transfer tape and adjusted to receive sheet material and pressure-sensitive adhesive tape of widely varying widths and lengths and to apply the tape to a number of areas of the sheet material with a variety of patterns and special arrangements in a single pass of the sheet material through the machine. A related object of the invention is to provide a tape-applying machine which can selectively apply a strip of adhesive tape extending the full length of the sheet material involved or in spots thereon. Furthermore, two or more different programs can apply spots simultaneously. Another object of the present invention is to provide a machine for applying strips of adhesive tape at high feeding rates to even thin, fragile sheet materials. It shall also be adaptable to readily accommodate heads to perforate stock, heads to blade-slit stock, heads to crease-score stock, and heads to rotary-slit stock.